Sport

Sorry, Phoenix: The reward for your historic season is a first-round series against the world’s best player and his championship team

Man, the Phoenix Suns are fantastic, so this isn’t to say they can’t do it, but it sucks that awaiting them in the first round after their fifth-best regular-season ever are LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers. Read more…

Sport

LeBron cements the continued existence of a game he hates

Look, the Play-in Tournament is stupid. Everyone pretty much knows it. The players certainly hate it, and even the ones who get to participate in it probably don’t like it much more. It’s manufactured drama. We’ve had 72 games this year, and in normal times we’ll have 82, and if you’re not in playoff spots […]

Sport

The Charlotte Hornets are doomed to run the ‘treadmill of mediocrity’

The “treadmill of mediocrity” is a term coined by former Portland Trail Blazers GM Kevin Pritchard in 2011. It’s pro basketball limbo — being good enough to sneak into the playoffs but not good enough to win, yet not quite bad enough to earn a top-5 draft pick and select a serious game-changer. And still, […]

Sport

Warriors-Lakers shows just how much fans miss Warriors-Cavs

The NBA’s first-ever play-in tournament starts tomorrow — eight teams, six games, four playoff spots up for grabs. But if you turned on SportsCenter at any point in the last two days, you’d think only one game was happening tomorrow — Warriors at Lakers. Read more…

Sport

Steph Curry rides historic hot streak into Play-In Tournament, but what does that mean for Golden State?

On April 2, Golden State’s season reached its nadir with a 53-point loss to the Raptors in Tampa. Stephen Curry, who had recently returned from a five-game absence, sat out the second game of a back-to-back, Draymond Green was out with a finger injury, and it was the kind of night where the dynasty seemed […]

Sport

Does the ‘hot hand’ really exist? Deadspin investigates, using Steph Curry’s historic streak

On April 2, Golden State’s season reached its nadir with a 53-point loss to the Raptors in Tampa. Stephen Curry, who had recently returned from a five-game absence, sat out the second game of a back-to-back, Draymond Green was out with a finger injury, and it was the kind of night where the dynasty seemed […]